Construction Begins on Google Fiber

by Lisa Christensen

June 11, 2015

Salt Lake City—The first of the cable for Google’s coming high-speed internet network is now being installed in Utah’s capital city.

After months of designing the Salt Lake City network, construction crews for Google Fiber have started laying the first of the roughly 600 miles of fiber—enough to stretch to the Canadian border—throughout the city. Crews working to install the fiber are aiming to make the process as quick, unobtrusive and safe as possible, according to a press release. Fiber will be installed either by burying it underground or hanging it on utility poles.

The main fiber optic cable, a sort of Internet backbone, will reach Salt Lake City through a location where the local Google Fiber network is connected to the backbone, dubbed a point of presence. A ring of fiber cables will be installed around Salt Lake so workers can pull fibers more easily into various neighborhoods around the city.

Large bundles of fiber enter one of five fiber huts that will eventually be installed around the city, which serve as distribution centers, dividing the large bundles into smaller bundles. Those smaller bundles connect to telecom cabinets, which further divide the bundles to go towards individual homes. Access fiber for individual homes run through neighborhoods underground or along more than 20,000 utility poles. Two fiber strands break off from the main line for each home—one for use and the other for redundancy.

The project is expected to be completed by next spring. Residents of Salt Lake City who want to be notified of project progress can sign up for alerts at google.com/fiber.